STEVENSON, Robert Louis.

£65,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

"The Waif Woman: A cue - from a saga", autograph manuscript short story. The original manuscript for Stevenson's gothic horror story, extensively revised and corrected by the author, unpublished in his lifetime. No other drafts for the story are known, and complete manuscripts of Stevenson's fiction are exceptionally rare in commerce.The story was inspired by the ghost story of Thorgunna in the Erybyggja saga, in which a rich woman arrives in Iceland and dies suddenly in the house of a younger woman. The young woman keeps her fine clothes and jewellery for herself, despite the old woman's dying wish, and in doing so brings death and destruction to her village. Stevenson imbues the story with his own characteristic touches, adding several gothic hauntings, an underlying emphasis on greed and materialism, and a gruesome ending.Stevenson originally proposed "The Waif Woman" for inclusion in Island Nights' Entertainments, writing to his editor, Sidney Colvin, that, though it was "not up to the mark of 'The Bottle Imp'", it had "a certain merit" and "fit in style" with the other stories in the collection (3 December 1892). The following day, however, he wrote again to Colvin: "My wife protests against the Waif Woman and I am instructed to report the same to you."Stevenson's stepdaughter, Isobel Field, recalls the author reading aloud "a story called 'The Witch Woman' that none of us cared for very much. My mother said it showed the influence of a Swedish author he had been reading

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